


I'm Not Scared to Die, I'm a Little Bit Scared of What Comes After.

by Shemagh



Series: The Strexcorp Files [2]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Actual Minor Character death, Angst, Bad Things Happen To Carlos, Bad Things Happen To Cecil, Carlos is Protective, Comatose, Dot Day, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feels, Freaked Out Carlos, Hurt/Comfort, Language, Medical, Medical Kink, Medical Procedures, Medical Torture, Medication, Mental and physical trauma, Other, Sadness, Strexcorp, Suicide Attempt, Torture, Trigger Heavy, implied major character death, lots of blood, slight gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 06:48:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shemagh/pseuds/Shemagh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil and Carlos meet dangerous new friends affiliated with Strexcorp and learn more about themselves, each other and their fellow Night Vale citizens in the process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A New Day Begins

**Author's Note:**

> This Fic is made to extend off of my first work, First Month Anniversary, but it doesn't have to. I am not a licensed medical professional. Some scenes reflecting the need for medical intervention may not be terribly accurate. This story could be rough for some people. This story could be nothing to others. I apologize if you become offended or anything. If there's a trigger you find that I hadn't already prepared you for above, you can let me know and I'll add it. I will add extra warnings to the chapters that are particularly heavy, but I can't guarantee I'll catch them all, and I can't guarantee that the story will remain cohesive if those parts are skipped. The first few chapters are kind of slow, sorry about that.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cecil and Carlos get a start on what promises to be a day like no other.

They were distant at first, the helicopters, but by the time the sun rose above the horizon they were upon Night Vale in force. They hovered over the town ominously, forming circling groups around various houses and businesses before regrouping to move on to others. By 10 am, a group of 4 had settled into a circular vigil above Carlos’s apartment complex, ripping him from a heavy sleep. He shot up and bolted to the window in alarm. The raucous flying vehicles were totally yellow, save for the large “S” logos on their underbellies. While he had never seen these in town before, he didn’t find them to be immediately suspicious, and he turned his gaze to the sundial he had constructed on his windowsill. Eyes wide, he turned in a panic to his bed, shouting as he spun around.

“CECIL! Cecil, we’re late! You’ve got to get-“ He stopped short as he realized that he was the only living soul in the room. He listened to the apartment, scanning for any sign of Cecil within its walls before realizing the futility of the endeavor given the deafening chop of the helicopters. He detected the faint smell of coffee, and he decided to study that lead, walking slightly unsteadily out of the room as his sore muscles caught up with his speeding brain. He remembered last night all too well. He remembered the heat, the passion, the beautiful man calling his name with such lust. . . he cut the thought short as he felt himself go half hard, realizing that he was still totally nude. He turned back around sheepishly and got himself mostly dressed before returning to the hallway, brushing his hair back into place with his fingers and wiping the sleep out of his eyes with the sleeve of his flannel top.

The kitchen was both devoid of sentient life and remarkably cleaner than he remembered it being. As he scanned the countertop, his eyes rested on his portable radio, humming faintly over the din with white noise, and the coffee maker, sitting neatly in the corner, carafe half full.

“Oh, thank you!” He sighed, eyeing the ceiling in praise as he deftly opened a cabinet and snatched up the first mug he could reach with earnest. The warmer beneath the carafe had already shut off and the liquid was cold, but he poured some nonetheless and set the mug in the microwave, commanding the appliance to function for however long it considered two minutes to be. In the interim, Carlos spotted his iPad and phone sitting on the table in the nook, the cover on the tablet was folded back, propping the bare face up, demanding his attention. He reached out with two fingers, pressed the single button on the bottom border and swiped across the screen in a well practiced motion. The device flashed to life, revealing a white page, its edges covered in pink and red hand drawn hearts. The note in the center was typed out in a lazy, flowing script:

“Good Morning, Carlos! I had such an amazing time last night! Why didn’t you tell me you were such a fabulous lover?-” Carlos blushed and rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment, a grin forming on his face. He was never very good with flattery and compliments, and he most certainly did not think he was much of a sex guru. “I am sorry I did not wake you, you were sleeping so soundly and I simply didn’t have the heart. It is your day off anyway so I figured you wouldn’t mind.” The realization that he had panicked for nothing only made him more embarrassed. “I had to go to the station early this morning to gather reports about the helicopters that seem to have paid us a visit. Normally the interns would do that, but I don’t get a call directly from Station Management every day, so yeah. Maybe after the midday report we can catch lunch or something? I hear Jerry’s Tacos has added new items to their Italian menu. . . Anyways, have a good day off! Please be careful if you go out today, I am not really sure about these new visitors, and if you are any indication, my intuition with strangers is pretty spot on. With love, Cecil.”

The microwave’s loud beep jerked him from studying the hearts on the page. He set the tablet down and greedily robbed the microwave of its contents before sitting down at the table and checking his phone. Sure enough, the lack of demanding texts from his coworkers trying to ascertain his location affirmed that he was free to do what he wanted with the day. Normally he would clean, but according to the hand written wallpaper that had been set on his phone overnight, his apartment’s faceless old woman couldn’t sleep with all the noise he and Cecil were making and decided to tidy up since the wifi was down during the rainstorm. Cecil must have done the dishes, though, because the faceless old woman usually refused to touch them. He turned his attention to his coffee cup. It was his favorite, featuring a yellowed image of Albert Einstein that turned different colors depending on the temperature of its contents, much to Cecil’s amazement, which in turn amused Carlos to no end. The handle had been broken off at least once, connected back to the vessel with epoxy glue, as evidenced by the solid, yellow-brown lumps at the top and bottom. He sipped at his coffee and set the mug down, sighing to himself contentedly

“Ahhhh, science.”

The station sat as it always did, solid and unchanging in the sea of its asphalt parking lot, the transmission tower looming over the structure from its fenced enclosure about 50 yards away. Cecil pulled up behind the building and threw his car in park amongst the vehicles of the interns, noting with relief that at least he would have a team to work with this time. He had only slept maybe three hours or so before the call. He clambered sorely out of his vehicle, closing the door with a firm shove. He gathered up his effects from atop the car and headed towards the light above the station’s employee entrance. As he reached out and unlocked the heavy steel door, he jolted at the sight of Carlos’s watch on his wrist. He did not usually wear much by way of accessories, save for his ties and his favorite cologne, which smelled of a mixture of Cardamom and sandalwood, with a tantalizing bite of absinthe. Its complexity hit him sharper than usual in the chill of the pre-dawn desert air. His heart fluttered as he explored the face of the watch, and the corners of his mouth sank as he read the time . . . 4:30 am. He shoved the door open with a sigh, closing and locking it behind him and dropping his keys into the pocket of his black slacks.

He travelled down the wide, dark hallway, inhaling the familiar scent of burnt coffee and musty old carpet. He flicked on the light to his office, directly across the hall from the sound booth, and set his various items down with a thud before exiting and turning into the men’s restroom about five doors down on the right. Khoshekh eyed Cecil sleepily as he scratched each of the kittens behind the ears. He rubbed his cheeks against Cecil’s hand lovingly as the man’s fingers vigorously rubbed beneath his chin. Cecil turned to the mirror and groaned at the sight of his tired eyes and messy hair. He had left in something of a hurry from Carlos’s apartment, both because he needed to go home to shower and get ready, and because he did not want the deluge of calls, texts and emails to wake his lover from his restful sleep. “Carlos must not get many nights like that,” he speculated as he slipped a comb out of his back pocket. Cecil knew that Carlos had to be lonely. He did not have many friends in Night Vale, and from what he could gather, Carlos wasn’t good at making friends elsewhere either. He could tell from the stacks of papers that had usually littered Carlos’s apartment that he likely just stayed up and worked until he couldn’t any longer. Cecil ran the comb under the sink for a second and ran it through his hair until it was tamed. He tapped the side of the comb on the edge of the sink a couple times and slid it back into his pocket, straightened his waistcoat and turned to leave. He jumped a bit as Khoshekh and company screeched out a farewell, but he regained his composure immediately and gave the floating cats a wave as he left.

The main conference room was a bustling mess as Cecil strode in, balancing his travel mug, glasses, tablet and a stack of napkins atop a pink cardboard box he procured during his trip over to the station. Half the room was busy scrambling about, pinning sheets of paper to the cork board covered walls, while the other half ran about connecting individual pages together with lengths of colored yarn. He lifted a red strand up with his finger and ducked beneath it, sitting at the large table and down-stacking his tower of items. He snatched a standard issue illegal marker from the pocket of a passing girl and scribbled “Intern Food” on the box and slid both it and the napkins to the middle of the table. He then just sat, waiting patiently for everyone to notice and find a natural stopping point. He understood what they were going through. He smiled fondly, remembering when he himself was doing the exact same thing. He recalled a particularly difficult story regarding the mysterious disappearance of the city council building, where everyone and their mother thought the best way to communicate with a pack of frenzied data analysts was to shout their presence to the whole room. They had to start over seven times before they finally just taped an “Out to Lunch” sign on the window and locked the door from the inside.

Before too long, each of the interns placed a special, color coded pushpin into their current pages, took a few notes down on their mini whiteboards, and stood still, eyeing Cecil with both admiration and exhaustion.

“Why hello, everybody. I see you all have been doing great so far. How about a break? Meet back here in 15 and get me up to speed?” He didn’t have to ask anyone twice. Many of them filed out of the room with a destination in mind, some for the restrooms, some for a smoke, others just wanted to stare blankly at the walls, emotionless and cold, before they went back to work with Cecil. Their desire to impress him was always very endearing, but he couldn’t help but be sympathetic. Some of the more composed ones had been there since one or two in the morning, when the helicopters first passed the county line. There was the issue, however, of the curly haired boy with his face planted firmly into the table, unable to hide the noiseless sobs that wracked his body, his hands rife with paper cuts and yarn burns. He had been there since the morning broadcast yesterday. Cecil rose silently and weaved through the mess of yarn to the young man, leaning down and gently placing a hand on his shoulder. The intern whipped his head up hastily, trying to regain his composure, but he was a lost cause. Cecil slowly, sorely, went down to one knee. He was eye to eye with the poor soul. He could read a name on his shirt.

“Keith? You’re not looking so hot, man.”

“So. . . many . . .leads.” Keith shuddered.

“Who were you paired with?” Cecil asked, concerned.

“Maria.” Keith replied.

“Okay. Can you do me a huge favor?” He watched Keith nod his head slowly. “Can you call someone to come and get you? You look like crap. Go home. I’ll take your spot.”

“A-are you sure? Is that really okay?” Keith asked, twitching his head in the direction of station management’s office.

“Yes, it’s fine. They’d rather we got this done short one intern if the outcome of you staying could mean a mistake. I think you can agree there’s an equivalent to more than a week’s worth of broadcasts up here right now, and counting. Could you imagine having to start that over?” Cecil explained in a calm, quiet tone. Keith argued no more, thanked him and called what Cecil could assume was his sister for a ride. It was not long before the rest of the interns streamed back into the room, and the contents of the pink box emptied. Interns took their seats, and Cecil processed all the information given to him in turn. After he had been caught up, he rolled up the sleeves of his cotton shirt and joined Maria and the others in pinning up the remaining leads and yarn threads, joking with the room as though he was not even their boss at all. Given the unreasonably short lifespan of an intern, he figured they at least deserved that kindness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading my fic. I really appreciate feedback and again, I'm sorry if I set any triggers off or caused any unpleasantness. I'm also sorry if it sucks, I'm still getting the hang of these things. I have adapted Carlos's double loosely from a headcanon by quesozombie on Tumblr, though I have branched off from the original idea and morphed the character a bit. Sorry if this steps on any toes, but please don't use quesozombie's art in relation to any part of this work, as the idea as it was written here is no longer applicable to the original character version of said character, and the mention of this artist's Tumblr page is at this point just a courtesy.


	2. Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos and Cecil try to make the best of what is shaping out to be an odd enough day when shit starts to hit the fan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not a licensed medical professional. Some scenes reflecting the need for medical intervention may not be terribly accurate. This story could be rough for some people. This story could be nothing to others. I apologize if you become offended or anything. If there's a trigger you find that I hadn't already prepared you for above, you can let me know and I'll add it. I will add extra warnings to the chapters that are particularly heavy, but I can't guarantee I'll catch them all, and I can't guarantee that the story will remain cohesive if those parts are skipped. The first few chapters are kind of slow, sorry about that.

Carlos was still seated at his table, studying a photo that Cecil had taken of himself for him on his phone that morning before leaving. In the photo, Cecil was seated in the same chair as he was, wearing a much-too-large-for-him t-shirt bearing the periodic table of elements across the front. He was holding one of Carlos’s MIT mugs in his hand, glasses stuck messily onto his forehead, and he was smiling warmly. Carlos thought the picture was actually kind of sexy until he finally noticed that despite otherwise being a wonderful selfie, Cecil had purposely crossed his eyes in a fairly obnoxious fashion, and now that was all Carlos could focus on. He decided to retaliate, sending Cecil a snapshot of him grinning, a pair of scissors open and hovering dangerously close to his loosely styled locks. Just as his finger hit the send button, Cecil’s smooth, soothing voice began the morning broadcast. Carlos gave his best maniacal laugh, knowing full well that Cecil, ever the professional, would see the image and be left squirming uncomfortably until he could reach a stopping point. Carlos downed the rest of his coffee and rinsed the cup in the sink, setting it on the drying wrack on the counter before finishing out his outfit by toeing on a pair of black and white suede tennis shoes and grabbing a lab coat from a hook on the wall behind the door, giving it a firm shake to verify the presence of his wallet and keys. He turned off the radio in the middle of Cecil’s phone interview with the city council, and when the radio flicked on in Carlos’s car, Cecil was still trying to pry information from the stubborn entities. Carlos detected a twinge here and there in the man’s voice and could immediately tell that Cecil was getting irritated. Not more than a few minutes into Carlos’s drive, city council hung up on Cecil. It was seconds after the following PSA break began that Carlos got a heart meltingly pathetic photo of a pouty faced boyfriend. He could see the tiredness in Cecil’s face despite the comical expression, and he suddenly felt a little guilty. As he pulled into the parking lot of the Ralph’s, he shot a text back. “I’ll come pick you up after the broadcast.”

Carlos finished his more urgent errands with relative ease, as it seemed the yellow helicopters were not entirely interested in him yet. When it came time for Cecil’s morning broadcast to be over, Carlos was boldly waiting in the open in the station parking lot, much to Cecil’s concern.

“Carlos! What do you think you’re doing out here? What about the helicopters? I gave you a key!” Carlos just shot Cecil a quiet smile and kissed him gently.

“Jerry’s Tacos?” Cecil asked, more than a little irritated at Carlos’s dismissal of his warnings.

“No, actually, I have a better idea.”Carlos said as he opened his passenger side door and beckoned Cecil in with his hand on his back. Cecil did not question Carlos, only sat in a quiet daze, staring up at the sky with concern. Carlos locked Cecil and himself into the car, and asked his phone to call the station over his Bluetooth as they drove back into the heart of Night Vale.

“Hello, this is Carlos. Cecil’s not going to be in until the evening broadcast. That’s not going to be too much of an issue, I hope?” Cecil shot up in his seat, gazing at Carlos in surprise. “That’s great to hear. I’ll have him back by four for the broadcast. Thanks.” Carlos hung up, stared forward, and they drove back to Carlos’s apartment in relative silence. When they got inside, Carlos made Cecil a wheat-free wrap stuffed with some fajita meat and grilled bell pepper, then directed him over to his couch, where a pillow, blanket and phone charger where already set up and waiting. Cecil set some alarms on his phone and lay down reluctantly, but after Carlos ran his hands over Cecil’s back for a few minutes, the man was down for the count, snoring gently into the back of the couch. Carlos gave Cecil a gentle peck atop his head and turned on the Science Channel, leaning his back against the couch with a sigh.

About an hour had passed by when a piece of paper slid through Carlos’s mail slot, drifting lazily down to the carpet. He picked up the paper and folded it open as he paced the length of the entranceway. It was a handwritten warning, no doubt left by one of his fellow scientists. He studied it with furrowed brows. It simply read

“Yellow helicopters = STREXCORP, AND THEY ARE COMING FOR US!”

Carlos snarled and made to slam the note on the kitchen counter in fury, but caught himself as the man on his couch stirred and began mumbling incoherently in response. He held his breath as Cecil trailed off and fell back asleep. He knew the melatonin he put in the wrap was not going to be enough. Once it was safe, he stalked rapidly down the hallway and pulled a box of files from a cluttered linen closet, emptying the contents out onto his bed in a flurry of dust and loose papers.

“Of all the times for these assholes to finally take us seriously. . .” he thought, digging through the files, locating relevant folders, scanning them with his eyes, and laying them to the side, his head a veritable super computer, crunching information at the speed of light. Carlos suddenly stopped shuffling papers and listened. Panic set in as the thrum of helicopters returned over his apartment and began to multiply. He knew that Strex was aware of his presence in the building, knew that they were not patient, that they would not wait forever. More importantly, he knew they wanted him. He knew exactly what they would do if he hunkered down in the apartment with Cecil and kept them waiting, and so for Cecil’s sake he strengthened his resolve. He dropped his files on the bed and sprinted quietly to his bathroom. He snatched a brushed aluminum case from his medicine cabinet and made a crouching run to the couch in his living room. He rested his hand on Cecil’s shoulder and shook him lightly, if maybe a little desperately, and the man picked his upper body up from the couch in response.

“What’s up, Carlos?” Cecil groaned, his tired, puffy eyes trying to focus and not quite being able to do so.

“Shhh, Cecil, It’s okay. I’m going to step out for. . . a while. . .and I don’t know when I’ll be back, okay.” He was choking back his panic, lest he startle his lover into full activity. This was already going to be hard enough with Cecil half asleep. “I need you to stay here. I know this is sudden, I know you have questions, but I need you to trust me and I really need you to stay out of this, so I’m going to give you something, and you’re going to be unconscious for a bit.” He anticipated the next few steps as if they’d happened before.

“Carlos, what’s wrong? What are you saying- ” Cecil shot up, eyes wide open, only to be locked into a deep kiss by the quick thinking scientist. Carlos had drawn a loaded syringe from the metal case and, with a steady and practiced motion, stuck it into Cecil’s neck, unloading the entire dose of the light blue liquid into his boyfriend as a single, silent tear streamed down his cheek. Cecil began to shiver, eyes wild with panic, unable to speak and rapidly losing his strength. Carlos smothered the helpless man in a bear hug and covered him with gentle, loving kisses as Cecil sank to the couch and closed his eyes in deep, artificial sleep.

“I love you. Please stay safe. . .” Carlos wiped away the tear trail on his face with the sleeve of his lab coat and took one more look at his beautiful Cecil before yanking open the door, slamming it behind him and breaking into a dead run, taking the steps from the third floor four to five at a time, jumping the railing about ten feet from the end and bolting for the lab. He ran faster than he had in a very long time, his head a whirlwind of strategy and anger and sadness. The yellow helicopters began to follow Carlos, and he could feel the laser sights zeroing in on him as he ducked and weaved his way across the vacant lots that separated him from his lab. He dove through one of the lab’s side windows, left open intentionally for him by his team members. They had all prepared for this, and he had a protocol to follow.

The interior of the lab was the picture of professionalism, sterile and tidy. Carlos reached into a cabinet below a large centrifuge, grabbing a black tactical bag and slamming it onto a nearby countertop. He snatched out a small bi-fold leather square with a badge on it, jamming it into his lab coat pocket before returning his hands to the bag to produce a holstered Springfield XD40 handgun, a folding pocket knife and several loaded clips. He threw the holster aside, sliding in a clip with the heel of his hand and pulling back the slide deftly. He tucked the weapon into the back of his khakis, taking advantage of the free moment to analyze his next move. He could hear the choppers landing, could hear boots hitting the ground, the shift of weapons and the static of radios. They were surrounding the lab. He pulled some decoy files from the bag, throwing some of them into the air, tossing others onto nearby countertops as the loose papers drifted to the ground. Finally he took out a headlamp, a large black radio and a detonator that resembled, in no small part, a garage door opener. He tossed the bag back into the cabinet and bolted for the back restroom, flinging open the door just as a flash grenade shattered through a window near the front of the lab. He could hear the familiar shouts of a tactical team, and opened the cabinet beneath the vanity, propping up the false bottom just long enough to disappear through the opening. He closed the cabinet doors behind him and replaced the bottom, pulling on the headlamp and running down the dark corridor beneath the lab. He passed a marker on the wall of the corridor and, removing the detonator from his pocket, he pushed the largest button and discarded the device. He could hear the screams of surprised agents as each of the lab’s sample storage units exploded, the ground shaking above him as he continued toward a heavy locked door.

Daylight awaited Carlos as he emerged from the manhole covering the ladder on the other side of the locked door. He was in the dumpster lockup of Big Rico’s now. He clambered up the fire escape ladder and crouched behind the brick wall that extended about three feet above the roof. He stared toward his apartment, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw it was free from helicopters, before returning his attention to the lab, which was crawling with agents. He noticed two men in suits standing a distance from the lab, talking animatedly into earpieces. He knew he wasn’t going to escape this predicament, but he at least wanted to put up a bit more of a resistance.

“At least I can get rid of a few of you rat bastards before. . .” He drew his weapon and began to train it on one of the men when a familiar voice stopped him dead in his tracks.

“I really would rather you didn’t do that. . .” came the voice from somewhere to his right. He looked over, startled to find a man of equal build and stature sitting calmly atop a cooling unit. The man stood and approached Carlos slowly, as relaxed as though he had known him for years. The two matched in skin tone, and Carlos could make out a familiar head of black hair, with premature grey near the temples, peeking out from around the straps of some sort of respirator. His brown eyes looked very similar, but also somehow different, as if tainted by something sinister and dangerous. Carlos aimed his handgun directly at his double, growling a warning as the man continued to advance, to no avail. Seeing that he was getting nowhere, Carlos removed the firearm from his double and placed it under his own chin, standing firm, staring at the mirrored image resolutely.

“I know what you’re after. I know what you need and let me tell you, if you move forward even another step, it dies with me. You will never know where or when we will strike, and you will never know just how much we have against you, do you understand that, motherfucker?” His body was alight with adrenaline, every muscle ready to act. That seemed to work as the man raised his hands, baring his palms in what could be considered surrender.

“Loud and clear, Carlos.” The man responded, chuckling.

“What’s funny?!”

“Oh, Nothing. I’ll see you soon. I. Will. See. You. Soon.” Carlos could feel the grin behind his double’s mask, he could see it in his eyes. Just then, Carlos caught a glimpse of a red dot as it quivered on his left shoulder for a millisecond. He caught a tranquilizer dart in his chest, just to the left of his heart, before he could even react. He fell to the roof’s rough gravel surface under the influence of the sedative, watching the legs and shoes of the other man as he approached, whistling a simple tune. His last recollection was the sensation of being heaved upwards; His last sight, the interior of the hold of a yellow helicopter. Carlos wished this was the first time this had happened. His head was a rush of activity as he recalled his training, his studies, and all the lives he had uprooted or destroyed in the past. He thought of the other companies he had investigated, he thought of Cecil, and what all this would mean for their relationship, if there was anything left after the stunt he pulled at the apartment. He knew he would at least need to give the poor man a worthy explanation, and was mentally kicking himself for not having done so earlier. Under all of the puppy-like enthusiasm was an incredibly intelligent and reasonable person, and Carlos felt ashamed of himself for simply assuming Cecil would never understand. It was one of the things that Carlos needed to work on. He had so much he needed to work on, and he berated himself for that fact daily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading my fic. I really appreciate feedback and again, I'm sorry if I set any triggers off or caused any unpleasantness. I'm also sorry if it sucks, I'm still getting the hang of these things. I have adapted Carlos's double loosely from a headcanon by quesozombie on Tumblr, though I have branched off from the original idea and morphed the character a bit. Sorry if this steps on any toes, but please don't use quesozombie's art in relation to any part of this work, as the idea as it was written here is no longer applicable to the original character version of said character, and the mention of this artist's Tumblr page is at this point just a courtesy.


	3. Captured

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos and Cecil find themselves embarking on unpleasant journeys against their will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some possible trigger material. I am not a licensed medical professional. Some scenes reflecting the need for medical intervention may not be terribly accurate. This story could be rough for some people. This story could be nothing to others. I apologize if you become offended or anything. If there's a trigger you find that I hadn't already prepared you for above, you can let me know and I'll add it. I will add extra warnings to the chapters that are particularly heavy, but I can't guarantee I'll catch them all, and I can't guarantee that the story will remain cohesive if those parts are skipped. The first few chapters are kind of slow, sorry about that.

Carlos had no way of knowing how long it had been since his capture. When he mustered the strength to open his eyes, he saw his own lap, his head hanging heavily, chin against his chest. For a time, all he could deduce was that he was seated in a metal chair, centered in a room that was much longer than it was wide. With a considerable degree of effort, Carlos was able to roll his head back on his shoulders, studying the dark, industrial ceiling until the world stopped spinning, at which point he was able to lift the throbbing mass upright. He scanned the dark room from corner to corner. It was simply set up, with a polished cement floor, walls lined with stainless steel from the floor until about eight feet up the walls, where the dark grey cement continued upward for what had to be an impressive fifty foot distance to finish out the design to the cement ceiling, its monotonous surface broken up by large and small pipes running through the walls to other rooms. Behind him was an entire wall filled with various lights, gauges and digital readers, all blinking, twitching and adjusting themselves to an unforeseen command. Carlos’s hands were hanging at his sides, his wrist shackles connected to heavy chains bolted to the floor on either side of the chair. He looked straight ahead, previous experience dictating he would either see a blank wall or more blinking lights, but nothing he had ever been through could have prepared him for this.

The alarms emanating from the small device on the carpet beeped out their songs one after the other, all falling on deaf ears save for the last. Cecil woke with a violent start, dragging his body into a sitting position and glaring at his phone as it buzzed dutifully, inching its way below the couch. He snatched it up, turning the alarm off and rubbing his neck. He felt confused and a little hurt as he bent down and retrieved both the empty syringe as well as its case on the floor by his foot. The needle had retracted into the body of the syringe, indicating that it had been used. Unable to draw any information from it, he tossed it aside and turned his attention to the case, turning it over in his hands. He noticed etching on the bottom. 

“Dr. Carlos A. Mendoza” he read, dragging his fingertips over the logo below. He had seen it before, as everyone had. ‘FDA.’” The case was of sturdy construction and resembled one that would store glasses, save for the slide lock, which Cecil clicked open. The inside was lined with a soft, black velvet and black clips protruded from the inside of the lid, holding in place two more identical syringes. There were no other identifying features, and Cecil closed the case with a ragged sigh, now left with more questions than answers. What Carlos did for a living never held much bearing on what he felt for the man, and therefore it never really occurred to him that Carlos might be involved in something dangerous. He was beginning to worry, but he was also running out of time to get to the station for the evening broadcast. He moved through the apartment, finding Carlos’s keys and locking the door behind him. He called Carlos’s phone as he travelled down the steps to the parking lot, frowning with disappointment as he both saw Carlos’s phone in the center console of his car, and heard the voicemail message tease his ears. He decided to leave a message anyway, in case Carlos came back for his car during the broadcast. Forcing himself to remain calm, Cecil spoke, unlocking the car and sliding behind the wheel. “Carlos, we need to talk. I- I have a lot of questions and I have to admit I’m a little bit upset about this afternoon. Please promise me you’ll let me know what’s going on. I love you, but . . . well . . . I think maybe we really need to talk about boundaries.” He hung up and rubbed the small raised bump where the needle entered his skin, throwing the car in drive and directing the vehicle toward the station. He hadn’t even wanted to look at the lab, so he drove by it without so much as a glance, missing entirely the blown out windows and the faint smoldering glow of fire from within. 

A huge clear wall separated Carlos from the absolutely massive room in front of him. It was made of the same cement and stainless steel as his current prison, but the little details contained within it made the expanse seem far more ominous. In the distance, Carlos saw that the long wall facing him was a grid of heavy square doors, each of which was secured by a latching handle, and each of which bore a large white tag. The doors rose high up towards the ceiling, each row accessed by a scaffold-like walkway. The wall to the right of the room was formed entirely by black grates, and he was able to deduce from the occasional booming and whirring noises he heard all around him that the wall was less of a wall and more of an unfathomably gigantic AC output, keeping the room in a state of constant cold storage. On the distant wall to the left, Carlos noticed, spanning half the length of the room, a long stainless steel countertop, dotted at regular intervals by no fewer than twenty deep sinks, faucets dangling high above them. He noticed that four or five of the sinks had wheeled tables pushed up over them. The tables had been slanted downwards and on those tables were familiar masses covered in less than spotless white sheets. Beyond the countertop was a row of empty rolling tables, supply carts, and shelves of trays and linens. The floor was open, devoid of additional equipment save for an impromptu station set up about 40 feet directly in front of him, enveloped in a square of flood lights. There was a slanted table centered within the station, the angle of which gave Carlos a clear view of the surface, of the gutters on the sides, of the drain built into the bottom. There was a rolling workbench next to the table, and it was laden with tools Carlos recognized as serving only a handful of purposes, none of which were fit for a living being. On the other side of the table was a tray table holding a variety of implements and pharmaceuticals. A large, opposable metal arm bearing a surgical lamp arched over the top of the table from another, emptier workbench, and a white linen sheet sat innocently atop the far side of that same surface, the loose folded fabric rippling with the movement of the forced air from the cooling unit. Carlos steeled his mind, and set his jaw. This was the morgue to the research facility of Strexcorp Synergists, the powerful, merciless pharmaceutical company he’d been investigating for the last year, and that station, he figured, literally had his name on it. 

Not much had ever been known about Strexcorp. The company preferred to keep to itself, only releasing the bare minimum of its available data, and rarely going out of their way to seek FDA approval for their products. Carlos knew they were based in Desert Bluffs, and he knew that Strexcorp did not deal much with the public market, preferring contract work and transactions with foreign countries and the military. It wasn’t until Carlos uncovered rumors of unethical testing and reliance on arcane studies that he pushed the government to assign his team to investigate. When the team descended on Night Vale, the closest town to the suspect company that wasn’t actually owned by it, Carlos had not planned to stay long. He shied from forming relationships with any of the locals, trying instead to keep his case as objective as possible. Everything he managed to uncover in that period was simply covered back up by Strexcorp and their massive legal department, and Carlos spent many sleepless nights struggling with the thought of Strexcorp’s executives plotting to silence him forever. The depth of his involvement had changed drastically after the attack at the bowling alley, however. Whether Strexcorp had been behind the attack or not, Carlos finally decided to take the condition of Night Vale personally, and the more he invested himself in Night Vale and its citizens, one of which in particular detail, the more he uncovered, and the more concerned Strexcorp had become. Carlos was going to protect Night Vale, and everything Strexcorp had done since he set his mind to the task was geared toward stopping him short of his goal.

The shrill squeak of an intercom ripped Carlos’s mind from the room. He heard the static clear, and his ears were flooded with a familiar voice. His gut lurched at the thought of possibly never seeing his beautiful Cecil again, and in that moment he closed his eyes, listening to the man’s smooth voice, letting it wash over him one final time. 

“A lonely heart. . .A wondering eye. . .an empty stomach. . .a shoulder to cry on. . .This is what makes us, us. Welcome to Night Vale. . .”

Cecil left his insecurity about Carlos’s behavior at the door of his sound booth as best he could, and ran his broadcast as he always did. He feared that he was over thinking the strange display in Carlos’s apartment, and felt himself batting away silently falling tears, especially whenever he mentioned angels, which he found odd, as they simply didn’t exist, and he was not so mad at Carlos that he would be crying at the moment. He chalked it up to the drug Carlos gave him and by the time he consulted the man’s wristwatch in regard to Old Woman Josie’s sunlight situation, Cecil had decided that he would love Carlos regardless, determined to work through anything to stay with him. By the time he recounted his conversation with Josie to the audience, he was over it, and he began gushing on his new boyfriend as usual. He knew Carlos hadn’t received his voicemail, and he resolved to delete it when the broadcast was completed. He even searched through his music, selecting a weather song from an artist Carlos had recommended personally as a means of wishing the man well on his mysterious endeavor. Cecil did not know what the lyrics to the song were, but somehow, he decided, it just felt right. He felt so wrapped up in his emotions that he hardly noticed the agent standing behind him until his head bumped the muzzle of his pistol. He felt the man’s arm slide around his neck, tightening threateningly. Intern Maria was standing to the side, similarly detained, holding a large white poster board covered in hastily scrawled text. Every time Cecil stumbled on the words, the agent jammed to gun into his head harder. Just as Cecil finished the broadcast, he understood what the poster board text meant by slow dripping and occasional screams, as the agent holding Maria fired his weapon and her body fell to the floor in a lifeless heap, the spray of gore from the gunshot falling off of the sound equipment and Cecil, who had frozen solid with terror, in slow, lazy rhythm. The station was soon stormed by agents, and the remaining interns were pursued into the station parking lot. Cecil had no way of knowing how many survived, as he was forced from his seat and dragged into the hall by his neck, just in time to see a familiar face emerge from station management’s office, coated in the ichor that was now pouring forth from beneath the door. The man smiled and all but skipped up to Cecil excitedly, grabbing his hand and shaking it, blood flinging from his soaked sleeve with the motion. 

“It’s me! Kevin R. Free! Desert Bluffs’ most humble radio host! We’ve met previously, but golly am I just so glad to meet you again! Tell me, friend, how are you feeling?” Cecil stared forward silently, eyes large as quarters and body visibly shaken. 

“Sorry about dropping in so suddenly, we were simply so excited to meet our new sister station that we came right away! I can’t wait to work with you, my friend, but before that, our lovely sponsor, Strexcorp, has offered to give you a little extra training! Isn’t that exciting? I’m just so jealous! They’re going to escort you there now! Don’t worry about your bosses, I went in there and had a nice chat with them and I think they are very on board with that! Have a nice trip! I’ve got your back!” Kevin hugged Cecil tightly, and the terrified man froze even tighter. The agent in charge of him had to practically carry him from the station. Cecil spotted Intern Keith, freshly rested and ready for his shift, ever the workaholic, hiding behind his car as the agents passed. With Cecil’s last shred of sanity, he mouthed a desperate “HELP ME!” before being thrown violently into a helicopter, which then soared into the afternoon air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading my fic. I really appreciate feedback and again, I'm sorry if I set any triggers off or caused any unpleasantness. I'm also sorry if it sucks, I'm still getting the hang of these things. I have adapted Carlos's double loosely from a headcanon by quesozombie on Tumblr, though I have branched off from the original idea and morphed the character a bit. Sorry if this steps on any toes, but please don't use quesozombie's art in relation to any part of this work, as the idea as it was written here is no longer applicable to the original character version of said character, and the mention of this artist's Tumblr page is at this point just a courtesy.


	4. Desecrated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos and Cecil undergo "training" with the help of Strexcorp's head scientist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a violence heavy chapter. I am not a licensed medical professional. Some scenes reflecting the need for medical intervention may not be terribly accurate. This story could be rough for some people. This story could be nothing to others. I apologize if you become offended or anything. If there's a trigger you find that I hadn't already prepared you for above, you can let me know and I'll add it. I will add extra warnings to the chapters that are particularly heavy, but I can't guarantee I'll catch them all, and I can't guarantee that the story will remain cohesive if those parts are skipped. The first few chapters are kind of slow, sorry about that.

Carlos bit his lip and sighed sharply, barely keeping his emotion at bay. As Cecil began sharing his news about Josie’s angels, Carlos watched a lone man, dressed in khakis and flannel, long lab coat stained, wheel a gurney along the scaffold-like walkway of the third row of square doors, opening one and pushing the gurney inside, its legs collapsing under it as it slid in effortlessly. A single, large wing slid beneath the linen covering the body, and the man tucked it back under the sheet unceremoniously before slamming the door and recording the contents of the compartment on the white label. Strexcorp was no doubt playing him a delayed copy of Cecil’s show, using the timing of Cecil’s broadcast to taunt Carlos, and it became even more apparent that he was not intended to leave this place alive. He made it a point to ignore the station in the next room, trying to make sure his final memories were happy ones. When Cecil started the weather, Carlos allowed himself finally to overflow. He never pretended to be a very strong person emotionally, making up for his sensitivity with his loyalty and commitment to protect. He simply breathed raggedly as tears slowly fell down his cheeks, landing in slow droplets on his lap, where on so many nights Cecil had laid his head, dozing peacefully to sleep as Carlos ran his fingers through the man’s hair. 

In that moment he accepted his fate. If he died there, if Strexcorp silenced a federal agent, maybe then they would no longer be able to cover their misdeeds. The situation wasn’t ideal, but he could at least rest easy with the thought that he would likely be the only one they’d kill. He made to look at the room, gasping in surprise. His double was standing directly on the other side of the glass, directly in line with him, his hands in his lab coat pockets, his hair blowing gently to the left, a faint wisp of vapor puffing from the vents of that respirator with each breath. He was staring; staring through the glass, through Carlos’s soul with those piercing, unsettling eyes. He was waiting for something. Cecil’s emotion changed. He mentioned Strexcorp over the airwaves with fear on his voice. The broadcast was shut off about two minutes after a gunshot ripped through the dead air of the radio, and the gravity of what Cecil’s words had truly meant ripped Carlos from the chair with terrifying force; his protector instincts setting flame to all his fear, anger and rage.

“NO! No, no no!” He strained at his restraints and screamed at the glass. He clawed at the chains and screeched unholy curses before slipping on the smooth floor, crashing to the ground and rising back up, shrieking again, yanking the chains taught with a clang. He tried to kick the metal chair toward the glass, tried to do anything at all. His double turned on his heel, satisfied, and walked back toward the makeshift autopsy station in the center of the room. 

“Carlos, I told you I’d see you soon,” came a voice over the intercom in Carlos’s room. Carlos could still hear over the whirr of the cooling system, and his heart sank to new depths as his double approached the table, removing his respirator. He tossed it onto one of the counters while commenting on how rude he'd been to be wearing it in the first place as a beaten, shirtless man with a bag over his head was dragged by his foot to the table. The man was clawing at the floor, struggling for his life, screaming. He was lifted up by his upper arms and slammed onto the freezing surface with brutal force. His double buckled the man’s upper body down using straps underneath the table, followed by his wrists, thighs and feet. He removed the bag from the man’s head with a flourish, making sure Carlos knew without a doubt just who was lying on the table. “Ladies and Gentlemen, for my first act, I give you. . . The Voice of Night Vale.” The man cupped his hands to his mouth and breathed out in them simulating a crowd cheering in the distance. The similarly respirator clad men who bore Cecil to the room left as fast as they could, as though even they were unnerved in the presence of the scientist.

Cecil was staring for the most part upwards, stunned from the force. He felt chill, and his bare torso, or whatever part of it that hadn’t stuck to the ice cold table, tightened in response to the freezing air. He tried to move his arms, only to be met with resistance. Wherever he was, he was not meant to leave. He looked down at the wall in front of him and strained against the straps in a panic as he saw, some piled, others hanging from hooks or stacked on shelves, the bodies of Night Vale citizens, mostly radio interns and other less survival savvy townspeople, all horribly disfigured, some even partially skinned, arranged on either side of a huge mirror. He could see himself, strapped down to what he could only assume was an autopsy table, frightened, face still covered in the blood of his murdered intern. He saw the work benches, saw the tools and the drugs and, blinking first in disbelief, then staring in terror, he saw, to his side, standing by his head and staring down at his face, Carlos. 

“Carlos. . .Carlos why. . .” The man said nothing. Cecil started to break. Tears openly began to flow from his eyes as his breath grew stressed, and before long he was sobbing desperately, slamming the back of his head into the table as hard as he could manage before the man grabbed him by a chunk of his hair and with a terrible grin, he said “let me help you with that.” The back of his head collided with the table so viciously with the man’s assistance that Cecil lost his vision for a few seconds and by the time he could see straight again, his head was strapped down like the rest of him, nose bleeding, his beloved Carlos mumbling jumbled dosage calculations as he filled a couple syringes with fluids from the tray table and turned to Cecil, flicking each one in turn to eliminate air bubbles. He held the two in his mouth as he wrapped a rubber strap around Cecil’s upper arm, flicking along his veins until one of them popped up. He watched with annoyed composure as Cecil, voice still wavering, begged him to stop. He held Cecil at the elbow when the man jolted his arm away as much as he could from the sharp needle, and he plunged the first into the large vein, depressing the plunger in small increments, doing the same with the second before stepping back and observing his subject.

“Carlos. . .please. . .PLEASE. . .Carlos let me go. . .I’m sorry, whatever I did, I’m so sorry. . .I’m . . . so. . .sorry-” Cecil’s voice was waning away, and his muscles relaxed against the straps. The pressure in his head from the repeated impacts was intense, and he had lost vision in his left eye almost entirely when the drugs took effect. He was both conscious and not, awake and alert but unable to move much as the man leveled the table and began to undo the restrains, followed by Cecil’s pants. Before long he was laying nude on the table, and the man was running his hands up Cecil’s body, desecrating his flesh with his deceivingly gentle touch. Cooing in admiration, the man shuddered with delight at his new, incapacitated plaything. He bent down and kissed Cecil’s soft, full lips before biting them so hard he drew blood, which dripped down the side of Cecil’s face as he stared helplessly, unable to protest. He whispered something in Cecil’s ear, and the defenseless man shuddered in disgust before flopping his head away from the scientist as the man put his hand over Cecil’s left pectoral and attached EKG electrodes to his bared, bruising chest at the ends of his fingertips, adding more lower down on both sides by his hip bones and up on his collarbones, where his arms met his shoulders. He connected leads to posts on each electrode and before long, he was commenting on the feedback of Cecil’s body through the machine. 

“Relax love, you’d think I was murdering you or something.”

Carlos watched this scene unfold on the other side of the mirror, lunging periodically at the glass and screaming encouraging words at Cecil in hopes the man could hear, sweat, tears and snot falling from his face as he strained against the chains. His wrists had begun to bleed and he had torn his flesh almost completely apart in some parts, still he struggled on through the pain.

“Cecil no! That’s not me! That’s not me! Don’t give up! Fight! FIGHT HIM!”

He fell, sobbing, to the floor as Cecil regained his voice, calling out his name, pleading with the him that wasn’t actually him to show him the mercy that man did not possess. He lay on the floor, staring at his tortured boyfriend with sorrow in his eyes, and he wretched from all of his warring emotions until he vomited repeatedly on the floor. He dragged his face through puddles of his fluids as he tried to sit up. He shouted out as loud as he could muster, ready to attempt anything to help Cecil escape his pain. 

“What is it!? What do you want!? I SAID WHAT DO YOU WANT, MOTHERFUCKERS! Do you want my life?! TAKE ME! LET HIM GO!” nobody answered. Carlos smacked his head back onto the floor, sobbing desperately at anyone and nobody. “Take me . . . take me instead. . .take me instead. . .” The cooling unit had shut off on its cycle, and Carlos could hear the creak of the surgical lamp being adjusted above Cecil’s shivering body. He watched his double select a pair of heavy pliers from the work bench. He watched him latch them onto each of Cecil’s delicate fingers, watched and screamed out in anguish in time with Cecil, drowning out the sickening crunching of bone as his double squeezed the pliers down and then wrenched them in unnatural directions. He screeched and tore at his hair and skin as the man struck Cecil’s limbs hard with a hammer to “test his reflexes,” He punched the ground and strained some more against his chains as the man dared to try to comfort Cecil who sobbed silently on the table, his body processes slowing in the cold air. There was a lull in his double’s onslaught as he pulled Cecil into a deep embrace. 

“I’m so sorry, Cecil, did that hurt?” he asked with a twisted, somewhat mocking smile. “You just strike me as the kinky type. I thought we were having fun.”  
Carlos could see Cecil’s face, wracked with agony, and watched his skin turning cyanotic. He realized that his double was choking the life out of his lover, and he wanted Carlos to see just how powerless he really was.

“Fight, Cecil!”

Cecil was gasping deeply, watching tunnels form in front of his eyes. He felt for a moment like he might just let himself die, but he summoned strength from deep within him and bit down with all his strength on the man’s arm. He let out a small yelp, more from surprise than pain, as he found himself being ripped from the table, skin still stuck to it he was sure, and thrown to the floor. The wires that were attached were ripped from his body and the monitor recording his vital signs flatlined from the loss of its subject. He was staring at the mirror, remembering the words of his mother so long ago, and as he made to try to stand up, gasping in agony as he attempted to move one of his busted limbs beneath his chest, a foot slammed down on his head, then again and again. The scientist’s attentions descended, his foot slamming firmly into Cecil’s ribs, over and over and over. Carlos’s double grabbed a chunk of Cecil’s hair and ripped the man from the floor, slamming his head repeatedly into the mirror until Cecil’s eyes started to roll back, blood running down the mirror as his head remained pressed to it. 

“You see this right here, you little shit?” He slammed Cecil’s head again. “This is a fucking one way window. You know who’s on the other side of this, watching you?” Cecil tried to speak, but with a mouth full of blood all he could manage was a gurgling sob. “It’s your fucking boyfriend you love so much, you worthless fucker.” He slammed Cecil’s head into the window again, holding it there and shouting upwards as the cooling fans kicked on again with a clang and a whirr. “Can you hear me, Carlos? I hope you’re watching this lovely show. I hope you can see what’s happening here ‘cause I’m going to kill this miserable wretch and then I’m coming for you, and oh I’m going to take my time on you. You’re in my world now.” With a maniacal laugh and a show of strength that could only come from the thrill of killing, he heaved Cecil’s broken body back onto the table before grabbing a scalpel. 

Somewhere in the chaos of Carlos’s struggle, he had broken enough bones in his hand that the shackle had worked its way down a bit. He slid it off the rest of the way, then he began slamming his heel down on his other repeatedly, forcing some of the bones to snap under the onslaught. He slid the shackle from his other bloodied and broken hand, trying to keep both somewhat useable, before grabbing the chair and slamming it into the window over and over again, screaming curses through the pain as the window started to crack from the repeated, adrenaline fueled blows. Carlos’s double noticed the impacts, yet he spoke again, loudly and in a slightly singsong voice. 

“I’m going to cut you open,” he slid his scalpel from Cecil’s shoulder to his sternum in a downward line before running it back up the other side. The cuts were deep, eliciting a gurgling moan from Cecil. “I’m going to reach inside you.” He ran the scalpel down from the point of his previously cut V to below Cecil’s navel. “I’m going to reach inside you and I’m going to gut you. Like a fucking pig.” He began to slide his hand into Cecil’s body. Cecil was losing consciousness, and his skin was turning paler as any remaining heat left his body through the incisions. The scientist withdrew, fingers covered in Cecil’s blood. He licked the red mess from them with relish and kissed Cecil’s mouth greedily when the window finally broke, shattering outward explosively, and Carlos was upon his double before the man could even react, pummeling the man with his broken fists before switching to the heavy hammer from the edge of the work bench. Carlos was seeing red, powering through his pain, channeling it into his arms and slamming the hammer into the man’s head over and over and over, gore flinging back onto him, not stopping until the hammer no longer had anything left to impact but the bare floor and a slick puddle of blood, brain and bone. 

He stood slowly from the decimated body, gazing at his handiwork before his head began to spin and he had to grip the table and vomit again at the sight and smell of so much carnage. He reached out for the white cloth folded nearby, straightened up shakily, and with all the tenderness and care he could muster, he peeled Cecil’s nude, bloodied body from the freezing table, wrapping it in the linen and his lab coat before setting it down on the floor, away from the mess and the bodies and the horror. He leaned his head down to Cecil’s mouth, pressing his ear to the man’s cold, blood-soaked lips as he checked, perhaps stupidly, for breath, sliding his fingers to Cecil’s neck in search of a pulse. Finding nothing and not quite knowing how to proceed, Carlos simply linked his trembling fingers together and centered them on Cecil’s sternum, the muscles and thin layer of body fat across his chest visible from inside the incision under the thin sheet. He began to pump straight down, with all his strength, screaming at the ceiling as the weight of the situation began to hit him harder and heavier than ever before. 

“Come on, Cecil, Come on! Don’t do this to me!” He choked back loud, unpleasant sobs, the futility of his endeavor only becoming more and more evident with each passing rep. He could hear Cecil’s ribs cracking under his palms, could hear the crunch of his own broken hands, could hear the throbbing of his blood in his head. “Cecil! CECIL! Come on, not today, Cecil, NOT TODAY! GOD! . . . ANYBODY! . . . FUCK!” Carlos was no longer able to do anything. He fell over Cecil’s body, gasping out profanities and letting the darkness of his mind envelope him entirely in the cold, dark room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading my fic. I really appreciate feedback and again, I'm sorry if I set any triggers off or caused any unpleasantness. I'm also sorry if it sucks, I'm still getting the hang of these things. I have adapted Carlos's double loosely from a headcanon by quesozombie on Tumblr, though I have branched off from the original idea and morphed the character a bit. Sorry if this steps on any toes, but please don't use quesozombie's art in relation to any part of this work, as the idea as it was written here is no longer applicable to the original character version of said character, and the mention of this artist's Tumblr page is at this point just a courtesy.


	5. Night Vale Protects its Own

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos gets much needed backup.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a little bit of blood in this one, not too graphic, though. An edit was made to reflect the possibility of Cecil's last name being different from his voice actor's. I am not a licensed medical professional. Some scenes reflecting the need for medical intervention may not be terribly accurate. This story could be rough for some people. This story could be nothing to others. I apologize if you become offended or anything. If there's a trigger you find that I hadn't already prepared you for above, you can let me know and I'll add it. I will add extra warnings to the chapters that are particularly heavy, but I can't guarantee I'll catch them all, and I can't guarantee that the story will remain cohesive if those parts are skipped.

Carlos was not entirely certain how long it was before a stray chunk of the room’s far off wall bounced into his side, jarring him into motionless consciousness. He heard familiar voices and the sound of gunfire . . . He sensed many hurried footsteps, felt warm hands on his shoulders, heaving his stiff, freezing body off of Cecil’s with a firm tug. He opened his eyes best he could and reached out toward Cecil’s body, now surrounded by faces he recognized; Steve Carlsberg, that pleasant nurse from the bowling alley, and about five interns, all armed with their old guns from school and whatever else they could arm themselves with. His arm was moved back to his side with care as his body was laid out on a stretcher. He was covered with a blanket and secured to the device firmly. He called out for his lover feebly as he was carried out of the room via the hole in the wall by four men, dressed in dark clothing, short capes fluttering behind them in the faint, warm breeze, blowdarts gleaming in their chest belts. Carlos could not make out their faces on account of the leather balaclavas. They were definitely members of the Night Vale Sheriff’s Secret Police. He saw the night sky, black and peppered with stars, heard the distant rattle of gunfire, somewhere in there he thought he heard some boys shouting “GO NIGHT VALE SPIDERWOLVES!” and “DESERT BLUFFS CACTI, GO TEAM!” and began to drift back out of consciousness as he was slid into the cargo hold of a blue helicopter. He heard himself faintly proclaim that he was fucking sick of helicopters. His words were met with laughter as fingers located a vein in his arm and warm saline flowed into his body. His eyes fluttered shut before long, and he failed to even so much as stir as Cecil’s body was loaded next to his. The helicopter’s doors slid shut, and a man in a white lab coat and purple scrubs began to run a tube down Cecil’s throat, linking it to a squeeze bag, which he handed to his assistant as he opened up a hole in the side of Cecil’s ribcage and slid in another tube, spilling clotted blood across the floor of the chopper. 

Given the extent of the trauma he had endured at Strexcorp, Dr. Teddy Williams honestly did not expect Cecil to survive. He stared at the poor man in shock for a moment before he placed two fingers on the freezing man’s neck, verifying his lack of pulse. He began readying a tracheal tube, grabbing a laryngoscope from his bag and inserting both it and the tube down into the man’s swollen and blood filled airway before it could obstruct completely. He depressed the syringe attached to the tube to inflate the cuff in Cecil’s trachea before attaching a large, blue bag to the tube, handing it over to his assistant to operate as he relieved fluids from Cecil’s chest cavity, lessening the pressure on the dying man’s heart and lungs. The man laying before Teddy was not technically clinically dead yet, thanks in no small part to the human body’s ability to simply slow to almost a complete stop when exposed to extreme cold, only to be brought back from the brink with some warmth and care, but he had a feeling Cecil would either succumb to shock, brain swelling, blood loss, or cardiac arrest before the night was over. Nevertheless, he knew that the cardinal rule of extremely cold patients was not to consider them dead until they were actually warm and dead. If anything, it would make the man’s passing slightly more comfortable. He took a few silent minutes to remember better times, when the man was full of vigor and sass. He was one hell of a bowler, and he always remembered his shoe size. Teddy frowned and picked up one of Cecil’s mangled hands, black with bruises and bloody from the protruding bones, turning it over in his hands studiously before twitching with surprise. He slid two fingers up to Cecil’s wrist, feeling beneath the skin the faintest, tiniest little pulse. 

“Well I’ll be a sonofabitch!” he exclaimed as he took the bag from his tiring assistant, commanding the man to get a set of vitals on Carlos for the ER physician as the helicopter prepared to land atop Night Vale General Hospital. The co pilot exited the aircraft and thrust open the side door, motioning for the waiting medical staff to proceed, and they did with haste, heads ducked low under the swinging blades. They whisked both men into the hospital below, Dr. Williams rattling out his report as he continued to breath for Cecil in a well practiced, rhythmic motion.

At first, Cecil’s mind was awash with radio static, interceded by slow, arrhythmic counting, never moving past thirty, lingering on some numbers, but not others. There was no logical order between the numbers that lingered and the numbers that rolled by smoothly. They were different each time they repeated, and they varied in volume as they were read in a monotone voice. He no longer felt any pain, physically or mentally. He no longer felt anything, not wonder, not happiness, not grief or fear, not the faint warmth of another body on top of his, nothing. Everything was. . .nothing, and he was alone. Pins of light burst through the darkness of his subconscious, only to be shut back out as quickly as they had arrived. Waiting in the darkness for what felt like hours, days, maybe even years, he was suddenly overcome by a sensation of warmth, and he saw in front of him his sound equipment, clean and tidy, welcoming in its familiarity. He reached forward, touching the microphone with his hand, which was neither hurt nor blemished in any way. He sat in the familiar chair, spinning a full circle in it slowly, noting the absence of gore, reveling in the silence. Intern Vithia strode into the booth, handing Cecil a stack of reports. He stared at her with wide, curious eyes, knowing full well that the poor intern had ascended to the heavens not mere hours before everything went so terribly wrong. She sat on the desk of the sound booth, smiling at Cecil warmly, swinging her argyle patterned legging clad legs in lazy motions in the air between the desk and the space beneath, the long laces of an untied Chuck Taylor high top dragging on the spotless linoleum floor with each motion.

“Hey.” She sounded precisely as he had remembered her.

“Uhm, hey. . . mind if I ask you something?”

“Sure. What’s eating you, Cecil?” 

“Am I. . . well. . . am I dead?”

“I wish I could answer that one, Cecil.” Vithia frowned, sympathy smeared across her face. She placed her hand atop his, dragging her thumb across its surface tenderly. “That’s kind of going to have to be your decision. . .” 

Carlos woke up gradually, a persistent itch setting in on the tip of his nose. He groaned audibly as he reached up to scratch it, instead smacking himself in the face with the hard cast encasing his hand clean up to his elbow. He grimaced and half opened his eyes, trying to sit up, but failing and landing back against the pillows with a loud moan, much to the surprise of the young candy striper who had busied herself with watering the plethora of vases filled with peculiar plants and flowers on the windowsill. She set the watering can down on the floor and raced from the room, only to come back in on the coattails of a doctor to collect the watering can, leaving again and closing the door behind her. Carlos tried to look around, but his pillow formed a set of blinders on either side of his head and he ultimately decided he was simply too comfortable to continue with the endeavor. The doctor checked Carlos’s monitors and recorded down a few data points on the chart in his hand before flicking one of the sheets on Carlos’s bed over with the tip of his pen, checking the bag of fluid from his catheter, recording that too, and sitting on the window seat near Carlos’s bed. Carlos blushed at the realization that his body was essentially an open book whom everyone who came in could read.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Carlos Mendoza. I am Dr. Steve Carlsberg. How are you feeling?” Carlos was not sure how to answer that question. He wasn’t really sure how to do much of anything anymore.

“You’ve been through quite the ordeal, from my understanding. For what it’s worth, I am incredibly sorry for the pain and suffering both you and Cecil must have had to endure.”

“Cecil. . .” Carlos choked back a sob as horrific screams filled his memory. He lifted his arm as if to wipe away tears, feeling, as had been engrained in him since childhood, unmanly for weeping in the presence of another man. His casted arm collided with his face instead once again, and he reeled from the impact. Dr. Carlsberg lifted his arm from his face and placed it back down to his side, examining the IV line in the crook of Carlos’s elbow to ensure he had not dislodged it with the motion before he continued to speak.

“You are both extremely fortunate, as much as I loathe using the term in this circumstance. I can only imagine that the mental trauma and the lasting physical effects of your ordeal will haunt you for a considerable time. I would be happy to recommend you to some very talented mental health professionals in Phoenix or L.A. if you’re interested. To say anyone here could help you adjust in any way that wasn’t very distinctly Night Vale would be a gross understatement.” He stared disapprovingly at the far wall of the room, a portion of which was covered in spatters of blood, vintage Lisa Frank stickers and the carcasses of small rodents. “At least they’ve obviously accepted you,” he chuckled “they don’t perform ‘Get Well Soon’ ritual sacrifices for just anyone, and they most certainly don’t typically involve themselves in the affairs of Desert Bluffs at the demand of a lowly radio intern, either. To be fair, it’s the most fun most of them have had in a good long time, but to even manage to have the Sheriff’s Secret Police sent out? The amount of luck on your side these last two days transcends any that I have ever before experienced in my many years of practice.” Carlos was not listening. He wrapped his mind around a key word, rolling it around on his tongue.

“Both. . .” He must have actually spoken; his voice nothing more than the hoarsest of whispers, because the doctor patted his arm and smiled warmly. 

“He’s not out of the woods yet, Carlos, but he’s got a lot going for him. We aren’t going to lose him without a fight. I’m hopeful that with continued aggressive interventions he will recover enough to eventually return to the airwaves. I’m not going to lie, that Kevin guy is pretty . . . well . . . out there, even by my standards. Now, if you’ll just give me a moment more of your time. . .”

Doctor Carlsberg pressed a button on the side panel of Carlos’s bed, raising the upper half of his body into a reclined position before walking to a lightbox on the wall as he spoke, digging black negatives from Carlos’s folder and sliding them into the clips as he clicked the box on. Carlos only half listened to the man as he ran through the myriad of physical issues plaguing his patient, pausing in some spots to point animatedly at the shattered bones of his hands and arms, at the dislocation and stress fracture of his shoulder joint, at the MRIs of his brain and abdomen, and at the fracture in his skull. Carlos perked up for the last bit, straining to remember when he might have received such an injury, before simply giving up and allowing his mind to run blank. He jolted back to reality as the doctor rested his hand on Carlos’s non injured shoulder firmly.

“Do you have any questions for me, Carlos?”

“When can I see Cecil.”

“In time,” Steve responded, already fully expecting the question. “He’s been in surgery since about noon, and will not be receiving guests for some time. He’s in a very fragile state. I couldn’t even begin to tell you where his consciousness is, but it simply is not within him right now, I can tell you that much.” Carlos sighed.

“I know, Carlos. There’s a lot to process. Please try to get some rest. If you need assistance, you can reach the staff with the buttons on this side panel here.” He pointed at the buttons. “I’ll be sending some ice chips in, and I’d like you to try to keep them down, if you can. Rest up, okay?”

“Thanks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading my fic. I really appreciate feedback and again, I'm sorry if I set any triggers off or caused any unpleasantness. I'm also sorry if it sucks, I'm still getting the hang of these things.


	6. Dot Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos struggles to cope with events and Dot Day proves to be a bit more than he can handle.
> 
>  
> 
> **edited to fix some errors**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suicide warning. I am not a licensed medical professional. Some scenes reflecting the need for medical intervention may not be terribly accurate. This story could be rough for some people. This story could be nothing to others. I apologize if you become offended or anything. If there's a trigger you find that I hadn't already prepared you for above, you can let me know and I'll add it. I will add extra warnings to the chapters that are particularly heavy, but I can't guarantee I'll catch them all, and I can't guarantee that the story will remain cohesive if those parts are skipped. The first few chapters are kind of slow, sorry about that.

The weeks following Strexcorp’s assault on Night Vale were not terribly different from how they were before. Everyone had a bit of a scare when an unscheduled street cleaning took place, but after the terror had passed, the citizens of the small town emerged from their homes to find the streets clear of the orange flyers that had been thrown from the offending yellow choppers on the day the voice on the radio changed. The yellow helicopters began to disappear, group by group, until the only air traffic that remained was the old smattering of black and blue, with the occasional diving bird of prey. 

Carlos was allowed to walk about now with the help of his IV pole, but it was made clear to him that he was to “take it easy” and “not overdo it” if he wanted to be released anytime soon. He had already been delayed for another week when he stood up too fast in the first weeks, reopening some sutures from his exploratory abdominal surgery. He was becoming restless, to say the least, and with all the work he could do from his bed completed, he was up and about, helping the candy striper that volunteered for his wing affix red and blue dots to various items about the room and the nursing stations in the hall. 

She was an adorable little girl with a golden heart and a lovely singing voice. She wore her curly black hair in twin braided pigtails, fastened by red elastic bands to match her red and white uniform. She always had a smile on her face, and her eyes were alight with joyous youth. Her theatrical antics brought a smile to his face, and he let her lead him around the various stations willingly, placing the appropriate dots on the higher items she could not reach by herself. The duo was hard at work stickering the last station in the wing when Dr. Carlsberg happened upon them. He placed a hand on Carlos’s shoulder and spoke quietly in his ear. Carlos’s eyes widened as he processed the words. Dr. Carlsberg stood waiting nearby as Carlos bent slowly down and stuck a red dot right on the little girl’s ebony forehead, right betwixt her big, caramel eyes. She blushed and giggled, sticking an identical dot to Carlos’s cheek before turning on her heel and skipping back down the hall to find more items she liked. 

“She’s definitely a lively little one.” Carlos commented as Steve chuckled. 

“Little Miss Flynn is one of our most devoted little helpers. I’m pleased to see she’s managed to keep you busy.”

“Summer Reading Program Miss Flynn? Tamika, was it?” Carlos asked with a shock.

“Her younger sister. Come now, Carlos, they’re not going to give us much of a window to do this.” Dr. Carlsberg unhooked Carlos’s IV line from the pole and the two men began to walk down the hall. A short elevator ride and a few more right turns later, Carlos and Dr. Carlsberg stood before a heavy steel door, the only word Carlos had to describe the view through the window centered within it was ‘sterile.’ Dr. Carlsberg touched his badge to the black reader wired to the door below a sign bearing bold red letters on a white backdrop: Critical Care Ward, Authorized Personnel Only Beyond This Point. The door clicked loudly, and Steve held it open for Carlos to pass through. The stench of bleach hit Carlos like a brick at first, but he found himself slowly acclimating to it as they walked further down the hall. Dr. Carlsberg spoke briefly with a nurse outside one of the doors, and she held out her hand to Carlos, shaking his casted hand gingerly as they exchanged pleasantries, at the same time handing him a kit from a set of drawers by the door. The two helped him put on the kit’s contents, slipping him into a yellow, floor length apron with sleeves, tying it behind him, working their largest pair of gloves over his casts before attending to their own identical outfits while he slid similarly colored booties over his hideous hospital issued house shoes and snapping a yellow plastic cap over his hair. All three secured masks to their faces and entered the room. 

Carlos stood frozen upon visiting Cecil for the first time since their ordeal. The man lay supine under a mass of perfect white sheets pulled up to his neck, various tubes and lines running across his body as though they were forming a road map for some busy city far away. Cecil’s chest rose and fell with mechanical precision as air and anesthetics entered his body through large tubes in his mouth. An entire patch of his hair had been shaved away, the skin along his scalp revealing a cleaner laceration amongst the offending jagged ones on the edge of a slightly recessed square in his skull. Carlos knew enough about emergency medicine through previous experience to understand the purpose of the mutilation, but Steve stepped up next to him and told him anyway, delivering a speech about brain swelling before grasping Carlos’s casted hand and reaching in out to tap on a patch of Cecil’s abdomen. He felt an unnatural resistance in the tap, and the nurse told him about the practice of keeping skull tissue alive by keeping it contained in different parts of the body until it could be re-transplanted back in place. Carlos marveled at the use of such a modern technique in a small town hospital, eliciting a flattered chuckle from the nurse and the doctor. Cecil’s face was covered in large bruises, some of which had turned to shades of green and yellow, and on his forehead, in the middle of just such a bruise, was another healing cut, held together by fresh white strips. The wells of the man’s eyes were similarly colored from the swelling, and his face was both entirely devoid of emotion and pitiful at the same time. A large screen mounted above Cecil’s bed read out vital signs in multiple colors, and every few minutes a strand of runic symbols would run beneath the data, sometimes flashing, other times solid. According to the nurse’s translations, the announcements were not really too important. They heralded such things as the administration of more anesthetic or a minute change to the numbers on the screen. From what he could gather, Cecil’s vital signs were pretty stable, but he was troubled with the startling lack of brain activity. He had admittedly never been around a comatose patient before, nor had he been one himself, so he was somewhat lost in that regard. He looked to Steve imploringly

“May I?” He asked quietly. The man only nodded slowly in response. Carlos held as much of Cecil’s heavily bandaged hand as he could before bending down and kissing him on the forehead through his mask, between bruises, lingering for a second before straightening up and sticking a single red dot right where he had kissed. Cecil loved dot day more than any other day of the week, and Carlos fondly remembered slow, stifling mornings in his lab or in his apartment, Cecil staring into his tawny face and asking those same two words, every time, before plunking a dot onto his nose or chin or forehead with a big smile. The dots from previous weeks’ dot days were stuck on Cecil’s chest unceremoniously. Dr. Carlsberg opened the door for Carlos and the nurse to exit. They slid off the protective suits, wadding them up and throwing them away in a medical waste bin before Carlos and Steve escorted themselves from the ward, the nurse waving solemnly behind them as they trekked back to Carlos’s wing below.

Cecil and Vithia sat in the booth for a long time, not quite sure what to say. Cecil felt peaceful in her company, and she stayed with him as he slid on the familiar pair of headphones, the ON-AIR light flicking on. He spoke, reading from the papers, his smooth, sonorous voice filtering through the microphone and filling the atmosphere with warmth and life.

“This is a story. . .” He started, looking at the ascended intern cautiously. “. . .about me. . .”

The rest of the papers were completely blank. Vithia, sensing the man’s hesitation, hopped off the counter, hugging Cecil loosely, sweetly, around his neck from behind, making him feel safe, in a way he had felt before, just compacted now, and smelling faintly of vanilla, possibly from her lip gloss. . .

“Work it out, Cecil. Tell me the story about you. . .” She spoke to Cecil as a dear friend would, resting her head against his as if they’d been watching one of his cheesy dramas together after too much wine, drunkenly slurring about their dream partners.

“I am a man. . .neither tall nor short. . . neither fat nor thin. . .I have a boyfriend” Cecil smiled, his face lit up with glee.

“. . .His name is. . .” Cecil froze. “His name is. . .”

“What’s his name, Cecil? Think. You know this.”

“His name is. . .” Cecil tensed up. An image of pain and fear played before his eyes. The man he saw in his mind was hurting him. That couldn’t be right. He tangled his hands in his hair, tugging hard as he tried to remember before he let go and buried his head in them instead.

“Shhh, Cecil, it’s okay. It’s okay. That man is not him. Think.” Cecil shook violently as he continued to cover his head in his hands, taking comfort in the pressing warmth of the arms around him.

“I can’t. I can’t, Vithia.”

“Cecil, you must. It’s going to be okay. You can start over if you need to; this is your story, after all.”

Carlos was hooked back up to his IV line and sent back to his room for the evening. He sat on the edge of the stiff bed, lost in thought. He had tried to make sure he never had a spare moment to think these last few weeks, managing instead to waste his time, as Steve saw it, plugging away at his phone and studying reports brought to him from his apartment by his fellow scientists. He had gotten Cecil’s voicemail, and like everything else in his life he over analyzed every word until he damn near drove himself mad. He was barely coping, but he was trying to stay calm, self-reliant. He was not in one of his stronger states when he found that the Sheriff’s Secret Police had recovered a heap of effects from both that horrible room and one of the yellow helicopters, and had them delivered to Carlos’s room, per protocol, where they waited until he returned from his visit with Cecil, a stark reminder of terrible things. The room was dark, and he kept it that way. The first pile was mostly clothes, folded, but not laundered, smelling faintly of Cecil’s cologne and sweat, and stippled brown with dried blood. Atop the clothing were two sets of keys, a comb, a wallet, a shattered phone, bloody glasses, and . . . a watch. Carlos picked up the still ticking object, rolling his fingers inside the band, circling the watch around in a slow, meditative motion. He put the watch beneath his pillow for safe-keeping and retrieved his handgun from the pile of his own effects next to Cecil’s. He did not really know why his hand reached for it, but he did nothing to stop it. He stared down the barrel, his eyes losing what little was left of their shine. In this moment of weakness, he heard Cecil’s screams, watched his terrified expressions, and felt every blow as if they had happened to him. What if Cecil woke up and he didn’t want anything to do with him. What if he was afraid, what if he shied away from the man’s touch. What if everything they had together was lost forever . . . irreparably broken? Why did it take him so long to figure out how to get free from the shackles? Why didn’t he scream louder, run faster? Why didn’t he try to carry Cecil from the room? Why didn’t they take him instead. . .why. . .why. . . Carlos recalled having loaded the weapon in his lab. His burned out mind couldn’t handle this new surge of emotion. He felt the crushing weight of having nothing left to lose. Mind so tired, hands trembling, he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading my fic. I really appreciate feedback and again, I'm sorry if I set any triggers off or caused any unpleasantness. I'm also sorry if it sucks, I'm still getting the hang of these things. I have adapted Carlos's double loosely from a headcanon by quesozombie on Tumblr, though I have branched off from the original idea and morphed the character a bit. Sorry if this steps on any toes, but please don't use quesozombie's art in relation to any part of this work, as the idea as it was written here is no longer applicable to the original character version of said character, and the mention of this artist's Tumblr page is at this point just a courtesy.


	7. A Story About Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cecil and Vithia work together to help Cecil decide on his story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter, I know. Sorry.
> 
> Thanks for reading my fic. I really appreciate feedback and again, I'm sorry if I set any triggers off or caused any unpleasantness. I'm also sorry if it sucks, I'm still getting the hang of these things. I have adapted Carlos's double loosely from a headcanon by quesozombie on Tumblr, though I have branched off from the original idea and morphed the character a bit. Sorry if this steps on any toes, but please don't use quesozombie's art in relation to any part of this work, as the idea as it was written here is no longer applicable to the original character version of said character, and the mention of this artist's Tumblr page is at this point just a courtesy.

“T-this is a story. . .this is a story about me. . .I am neither tall nor short. . .neither fat nor thin. . . I-I have a boyfriend. . .his name is. . .his name is C-carlos. . .” He stammered out the name as though he was unsure of it. 

“Tell us about him, Cecil. Tell us about Carlos.” Vithia gently kissed Cecil on the side of the head, melting away at the fear and the pain he felt, scratching at those emotions to reveal a trace of a much softer, warmer memory. A memory of an intimate moment, where the man cared about him deeply and caressed his skin with more love and passion than Cecil’s mind could even comprehend. 

“Carlos is a scientist. His hair is dark, his skin a lovely shade of caramel, his teeth are like a military cemetery. . . and he loves me. He loves me and would never hurt me. . .” Cecil was much more positive of this fact now. Vithia laughed out of happiness and begged Cecil to tell her more. She and Cecil continued to broadcast his life story for his audience. She comforted him as he would hang up on difficult parts, and praised him as he progressed, smiling all the while in a state of heavenly bliss. They sang the weather together and laughed at their lack of singing ability. At the end of his broadcast, Vithia embraced him tightly, choking back fat, happy tears and standing on her very tip-toes, pulling him down by his shoulders a bit before kissing him on the forehead and turning him toward the door out of the sound booth.

“What do you think, Cecil? Do you think you’re ready to go back?” He squeezed Vythia’s hand in response resolutely.

“What about you?” He asked.

“I’m where I was meant to be.” She said, turning back to plop in his chair, laughing as it spun around. He thought he saw the cutest little wings popping from the back of the baggy pink knitted top that hung from her shoulder, her head aglow in a ring of light. 

“Vithia, are you. . .?”

“Am I what? An angel? Don’t be silly, Cecil. Everybody knows that angels don’t exist.” She gave him a great big smile and a wink, and Cecil thanked her once more before striding from his sound booth out into the bright light of existence.

In the morning, Dr. Carlsberg and his nurse would be amazed at the sudden and sustained increase in brain activity in Cecil’s room. They would rejoice at the rapid decrease of pressure in his skull, at his body’s desperate attempts to wake up. . .but for now, Steve Carlsberg was standing silently in Carlos’s doorway, leaning a shoulder up against the frame, watching the man throw the handgun violently away, sobbing and screaming silently into Cecil’s shirt, watching with sad, knowing eyes as he turned the loaded clip from Carlos’s weapon over and over in his fingers.


	8. Strength

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dr. Steve Carlsberg opens up and gives Carlos some wisdom. Carlos gets stuff done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not a licensed medical professional. Some scenes reflecting the need for medical intervention may not be terribly accurate. This story could be rough for some people. This story could be nothing to others. I apologize if you become offended or anything. If there's a trigger you find that I hadn't already prepared you for above, you can let me know and I'll add it. I will add extra warnings to the chapters that are particularly heavy, but I can't guarantee I'll catch them all, and I can't guarantee that the story will remain cohesive if those parts are skipped. The first few chapters are kind of slow, sorry about that.

Carlos drifted into restless sleep, and in the morning he woke up restrained to his bed, the pistol gone, and the watch ticking away from its temporary perch around his IV pole. He saw Dr. Carlsberg sitting silently, watching, waiting for him to come to. Carlos found he could not meet the man’s eyes for more than a second, memories of his grief stricken attempt to extinguish his own life flooding back to him so fast he thought he might be sick from their sudden weight on his chest. He managed a quiet “Dr. Carlsberg.” Only to be met with Steve’s stern voice speaking.

” Good morning, Dr. Mendoza. Please get comfortable. I have a story for you, and it may take a while.” Steve wasted no time getting started.

“A long time ago, when I first came to Night Vale, I met a woman. . . “ Steve told Carlos of his first love in Night Vale, told him about the child the woman was rearing, his father having never been in the picture since his death in an unfortunate, yet completely Night Valeian manner. He told Carlos about how he and the boy became the best of friends, how the boy went so far as to call him ‘dad.’ He told Carlos about the high points, the low points, and everything in between. He told Carlos about the night he proposed marriage to the boy’s mother, he told him about how uncontrollably excited the boy was when he broke the news. He told Carlos of his own inability to fit in, about the fights, about the drinking, about the accident. The accident he did not cause, but could have avoided had he been driving sober.

“Carlos, her body was so badly mangled there was literally nothing I could do to save her. I tried so hard. She bled out on the pavement in my arms. Her son, the smart, sociable child whom everyone liked, barely pulled through, and when he was finally strong enough to be sent home, all he had to come back to was me, wallowing in my misery, constantly half a bottle over my limit. I neglected the boy, too paralyzed with guilt to step up and try to make something of our second chance, too scared of fucking up my chance at redemption to even fucking try. I could not even comprehend that the child might be capable of forgiving me, of allowing me to be a part of his life now that there was nobody else left. All I could think of was how the whole accident wasn’t under my control, but my inability to react cost this boy the only remaining constant in his life. I mean, how was I supposed to take ownership of that? You know what the kicker of the whole thing was, Carlos?”

“What, Steve.”

“That boy never even once held that crash over my head. That child still told me he loved me, he told me every day. He still called me ‘dad.’ He took care of me when I’d had too much, and he never once stopped. He didn’t stop when I struck him, taking my anger out on him when the only one I was really angry with was myself.” The doctor was barely holding himself together as he spilled his soul out in front of the captive audience. 

“ I told the boy terrible things. Countless times I told him that I hated him, that he was worthless, that he would never amount to anything. I ignored him, I left him alone to fend for himself for days at a time. One day he came home to find me drowning my guilt for good with the strongest prescription I could get my hands on. He called help for me. They got me stabilized, and when I awoke, that boy looked me square in the face and told me he was done. That he hated me. He hated me for giving up, Carlos. He hated me for taking away his chance to prove he could still transcend my misdeeds with his enormous capacity for love, even though he proved it countless times. He hated me because I wanted him to. Last night I saw you. I stood there in that doorway and watched as you grabbed that fucking gun and put it in your fucking mouth. I watched you give up on a brilliant, wonderful man, so full of life, capable of seeing the beauty in anything, before you even knew what he would say. You weren’t even going to give him a chance, Carlos.” Steve drew the gun from behind him, slamming the clip into the handle and pulling back the slide to chamber a round. He was towering over Carlos’s captive form, loosening the restraints until the man was free. He jerked the man to his feet violently, slamming the gun into Carlos’s casted hand and leaning in no more than a half inch from Carlos’s face, staring him down.

"Tomorrow, at 12:00 pm exactly, that boy who hates me with every fiber of his being, that precious little boy who is now the man you supposedly loved enough to enter into a relationship with, is going to breathe on his own. He’s going to live, he’s going to recover from this mess and he’s going to put it behind him and he's going to live! If you want to blow your fucking brains out before then, before you even know if he’ll come out of this hating you or fearing you, go right ahead. Cecil needs a man who can be strong for him for once. You want to be the rock that Cecil needs? Show up. If you come in and he comes out of all this loving you, you better get help, man up, and take care of him, and goddamnit, if he should wake up and hate you, you take that hate every fucking day, and you still never stop caring about him, no matter what he says, because I can guarantee he’ll never stop caring about you. The man hates my guts and yet he still never fails to read everything I write him about. I mean, my wife had a baby a few years ago and he sent me a fucking congratulations card! It said something like “I hope and pray with every ounce of my being that your new son turns out nothing like you, you piece of shit!” but it’s the thought that counts, you know? Take care of him, take care of you. He deserves nothing less after all he’s been through, and if that scares you into leaving, or taking your own life, well, then you’re no better than me, and you should pack up what’s left of your piece-of-shit lab and leave. Here are your discharge papers. Get yourself dressed and get out of my hospital. You’ve got some serious soul searching to do.” 

The rest of the day was completely surreal. Carlos walked to his apartment, unlocking the door and slamming it behind him. He stared at his haggard reflection in the mirror, studying his overgrown, chaotic hair and beard. He clambered into the shower and sat beneath the cold stream for what felt like an eternity. He did truly love Cecil. He loved him so much, enough to kill for him, enough to die for him, obviously. He tried to imagine hearing his name in the same disgusted tone in which Cecil referred to Dr. Carlsberg. He tried to rationalize painting his bedroom wall with his own blood, he tried to rationalize a life he previously thought would be beyond him. One where he and Cecil could live happily, transcending the traumatic events of their ordeal together as partners, moving beyond it all and laying in bed, lazing about together after a night of the best, hottest sex anyone’s ever had. Carlos’s head filled with doubt, his eyes with tears. He had made his decision, and sauntered off to the bedroom, bringing the gun with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading my fic. I really appreciate feedback and again, I'm sorry if I set any triggers off or caused any unpleasantness. I'm also sorry if it sucks, I'm still getting the hang of these things. I have adapted Carlos's double loosely from a headcanon by quesozombie on Tumblr, though I have branched off from the original idea and morphed the character a bit. Sorry if this steps on any toes, but please don't use quesozombie's art in relation to any part of this work, as the idea as it was written here is no longer applicable to the original character version of said character, and the mention of this artist's Tumblr page is at this point just a courtesy.


	9. A New Day Begins Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Did Cecil wake up? How's Carlos? This much and more, now.
> 
>  
> 
> **edited to fix errors**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter. Thanks for reading! The song for the weather is Brand New- Jesus (Jesus Christ)

Dr. Carlsberg, Dr. Williams, who swore adamantly that he was just there as a matter of curiosity, and Cecil’s nurse all converged on Cecil’s room to remove him from his ventilator. Cecil, as if by some miracle, had found his way back to his consciousness once already that morning, opening his eyes and attempting to glare with disgust as best his aching face could manage up at Dr. Carlsberg before fading out again. The clock on the wall read 12:00 pm, and Steve let out a nervous sigh, flicking off the ventilator, and removing the tubes from Cecil’s throat, hoping for the best. The moment passed silently, but the victory in the air was palpable as Dr. Carlsberg turned to Dr. Williams and the nurse and gave them both a silent, congratulatory high five. Cecil was breathing, and all on his own. He did not become alert or open his eyes again for several hours, but he occasionally rasped out a desperate plea, a single, strained word, silencing anyone in the room as they wondered what exactly they should say in response, or if he would even hear them if they said anything. Carlos did not show up for the little meeting. He did not show up until much later that day, hair lightly trimmed, face clean shaven, lab coat spotless and cleanly pressed. He had chosen to forgo his usual flannel tops and khakis or jeans in favor of a clean cotton oxford, a tie and slacks. The nurse had buzzed him in, and he found his way to Cecil’s room.

“I’m impressed, Dr. Mendoza. You clean up pretty nice, but you’re awfully late.” Steve Carlsberg stood in front of Cecil’s door, arms crossed. 

“I was stuck in a meeting. Besides, I figured you could use a victory to keep for yourself today. Now it’s my turn, if you don’t mind.” Carlos gave Dr. Carlsberg‘s shoulder a firm squeeze, deftly walking past the man as he did so and pulling out a radio from the crook of his arm. He flicked it on and set it on the floor. Cecil’s voice was playing over the air in the form of a pre-recorded public service announcement, but upon its completion an over-excited man with a higher voice that beamed artificial sunshine came on, rambling away about scientists and how they were rebuilding the lab by Big Rico’s thanks to some government funding ‘or whatever’, before going on a rambling, somehow still unreasonably cheery, tyraid about ‘exciting new management opportunities at Strexcorp Synergists. . .Strexcorp. . .It is STILL EVERYTHING, just even more so with fresh faces and new ideas for the direction of the company, totally unrelated to the recent government raids and in no way influenced by the work of FDA agents operating in neighboring towns that totally aren’t Night Vale, I mean, come on. ’

What Dr. Carlsberg hadn’t known all this time was that Carlos had been running himself ragged since he woke up those short few weeks ago, orchestrating covertly from his bed in Night Vale General Hospital one of the largest pharmaceutical company corporate takeovers in recent history, certainly the largest of his career, earning him, among other things, both a promotion and, at his personal request, a private allocation of funds for a long-term grant to “study the long term effects of the company’s rampant ground water pollution on its neighboring small towns,” with a station in Night Vale as a base of operations. Carlos would be fit to retire before the grant would ever be reevaluated. He was planning to stay in Night Vale indefinitely, no matter what happened.

Carlos placed his fingers, hand still encased in a bulky cast, into Cecil’s butchered hair, careful to avoid putting pressure on the man’s bruises as he caressed down the side of his face, down his slender neck, across the tangle of tubes and wires to rest at his wrist, unsure of what exactly to do next. Cecil’s eyes fluttered halfway open, his mouth forming into a half smile with considerable effort. 

“Carlos?. . .”

Kevin’s voice, still unreasonably perky, continued to spew into the room, passing mention that a scientist had told him Cecil had finished his training with Strexcorp. Kevin expressed his joy, asking for help from the town in wishing him the best of luck in his recovery before waxing poetic about the day they could hopefully meet and run some broadcasts together.

“I’m here for you Cecil. I’ve got you.” Carlos moved to Cecil’s hand with his fingertips, squeezing ever so lightly to alert the man to his presence. He leaned down closer to the supine man’s face so he could better hear the quiet, slightly slurred words he spoke. 

“Don’t look at me, my perfect, beautiful Carlos. I’m sure I look so hideous right now.” Carlos brought his face right up to Cecil’s and kissed him. He kissed him over and over again, alternating the tender motions with words.

“You. Will always. Be perfect. To me.”

“Oh, Carlos.”

The two men stared into each others’ eyes, Carlos’s index finger drifting ever so gently across Cecil’s cheek in a slow repetitive motion as the weather played over the airwaves. It was an older song, but it had been on his mind for days, and he logged away a reminder to thank Kevin for being so eager to play it instead of whatever else he had planned to fill the space. He hummed along to the lyrics, lulling Cecil back to sleep with the motion of his hand.

“Jesus Christ that’s a pretty face,  
The kind you’d find on someone I could save,  
If they don’t put me away,  
Well, it’ll be a miracle. . .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading my fic. I really appreciate feedback and again, I'm sorry if I set any triggers off or caused any unpleasantness. I'm also sorry if it sucks, I'm still getting the hang of these things. I have adapted Carlos's double loosely from a headcanon by quesozombie on Tumblr, though I have branched off from the original idea and morphed the character a bit. Sorry if this steps on any toes, but please don't use quesozombie's art in relation to any part of this work, as the idea as it was written here is no longer applicable to the original character version of said character, and the mention of this artist's Tumblr page is at this point just a courtesy.


End file.
